Hitherto Maisonneuve had acted as administrator of justice, but now the seigneurs named Charles d'Ailleboust des Musseaux as judge and retained Bénigne Basset as clerk of the Seigneurs.
The new appointments, made over their heads in defiance of their rights, caused M. Souart, on behalf of the seigneurs, to go to Quebec with M. de Maisonneuve, to protest. But while there, de Mézy dealt a further blow by presenting Maisonneuve with his commission of governor of Montreal, thereby intimating that the seigneurs had no right of appointment. M. Souart, relying on the decree of 1644 giving this power to the seigneurs, then the Company of Montreal, protested, and he was ordered to produce the letters patent for proof; meanwhile de Maisonneuve was to act as governor of Montreal, by the power just granted by the governor general, till the king should order otherwise.
In the meantime de Maisonneuve acted on his new commission but always without prejudice to the rights of the seigneurs. This loyalty was also shared by Bénigne Basset for, in a contract of marriage for November 16, 1663, he signs himself as clerk in the royal sénéchal's court, notary royal, and clerk for the seigneurs. It may be for this reason that he was supplanted later in his office in the sénéchal's court by Sieur de Mouchy, who had been appointed by the Sovereign Council "for good reasons." Maisonneuve's position at Montreal was also getting insecure. There was now an effort on foot to bring Montreal under control of Quebec as the seat of the royal government and the veteran, de Maisonneuve, as an adherent of the old ways, was jealously viewed by de Mézy and perhaps by Laval. Certainly Montreal was now being dominated by the newly-imported royal policy.
But the new colonial policy was to bring good results from the new blood infused. If wisely handled, the new régime would have worked permanent good.
The resignation of the Company of New France, on February 24, 1663, was accepted by the king in March of the same year, and the edict on the creation of the Supreme Council followed in the April following.
From the date of the establishment of the Supreme Council, September 18, 1663, Civil Government may be said to have begun. Hitherto no deliberative board had sat to discuss the affairs of the colony. There had been a vague and indefinite system of government by the chartered companies, but there had been no constituted hierarchy, either in the political or in the judicial order.
The council was modeled on that of the parliament of Paris. The terms of the "ordonnance" of its creation indicated that the king wished to create here, in Canada, an authority to supply what the parliament of Paris, seeing its great distance away, could not provide for. Yet the Sovereign Council was never a real parliament, although it contained in germ, if not actually, all the power of one. The dignity of the new body was so great later that when Frontenac came as a governor he considerably astonished the simple burgesses of the little fortress of Quebec with all the pomp at his command. He would be in truth a "Viceroy," and Gascon that he was, he would play the part. Others also in their sphere would reproduce the usages of the Paris mother parliament; hence the troubles about "préséance," among the counsellors, which seem so trivial to us, but not so to them, punctilious in their observance of their high positions. With Paris for an example, it is not surprising that Frontenac dismissed his counsellors, when it suited him, for did not Louis le Soleil do the same himself?
The "ordonnance" of the creation of the council, after indicating the composition of its members and outlining its general powers, then continues: "Moreover we give power to the said council to commission, at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers and in all other places, as many, and in the manner as it shall deem necessary, persons as shall judge in the first instance without chicanery and delay, the procedures of different proceedings which may arise between private persons, and shall name clerks, notaries and scriveners, surgeons and other officers of justice whom they shall judge proper, our desire being to drive all chicanery as far as possible out of the said country of New France, with the end that prompt and speedy justice may be rendered."
The Sovereign Council was held at Quebec but it ruled over Montreal, not in broad lines of general policy only, but in what we would call village politics. It went into very small details indeed and the parish church portals were frequently posted with proclamations from Quebec. There does not seem to have been much home rule for Montreal in those days.
A picture of this period is presented in the "Histoire Véritable et Naturelle de la Nouvelle France," dedicated to Colbert, the minister, by a letter written from Three Rivers on October 8, 1663, by Pierre Boucher, who had been sent to France by the inhabitants of La Nouvelle France for help, in 1662, when he had conversed with Colbert personally.